


the tiger inside will eat the child

by goblindaughter



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, non-graphic depictions of vampire-typical violence, warning for minor references to parental abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 08:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4698734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matska Belmonde, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the tiger inside will eat the child

Once--a long time ago--you were mortal. Human. Clay and breath instead of thirsting stone. You ate dates instead of blood and you bled when you were beaten.  


(Maman is so fond of turning vulnerable children. It makes them easier to control. Later you will know this.)

\--

When you were new-wed, you took a strange woman in from the cold. Your husband, who was not a bad man but not a bright one, saw that she was foreign and alone. Your father-in-law, who was cruel, and your mother-in-law, who was crueler, saw that she was beautiful and mannerly and flattered them. You saw that she only pretended to eat, and that when she touched your hand her gaze went to the inside of your wrist, and that when she smiled she did not bare her teeth. 

Three nights, she slept beneath your roof, and on the third night she made her choice. 

You were not given a choice. It was assumed--as it was always assumed--that you would agree. 

Then, you did. 

Then, you drank your husband’s life down like wine, and the lives of his parents, too. Then, you opened your mother's chest and ate her treacherous heart like a fig. Then, you opened your father's throat and you laughed as his breath left him. Your turn to hurt them, and it was sweet as sweet could be. You were so strong, half-drunk with it, with the fire of being new. Your veins burned with it, sang with it--oh, you felt like a goddess. 

_Look at you,_ said Maman, with your brother's blood on her chin. _You're beautiful, daughter of mine._

\--

The blood of the covenant, they say, is thicker than the water of the womb. 

It can choke the life from you just as well.

\--

You shed your name like cast-off snake-skin--there is no girl-child named Saba; there is Fadima and Alice and Erzebet and Lucia and Matska. They stop being important, after a while. A name’s only a word. You have no need of a name.  
(But Saba is still tucked inside your heart. What there is of it.)

\--

Maman turns others--sweet little Ngozi, George the rake, people whose names you never know. She plays you all, a master violinist. And you all dance willingly, until you don’t. Or you don’t, anyway. One day she asks you to hold Scotland in her name, and leaves you there alone the better part of a century. You are her eldest, her most trusted; she feels as safe in this as she ever does in anything.  


Alone, you learn yourself. You learn your power. You grow used to ruling, and you begin to loathe the idea of being ruled--even so lightly as Maman does when you obey her every whim. 

And when she visits, you try to kill your mother for the first time. 

It does not go well for you.

\--

The second time, you are once more in her good graces. In the icy, forsaken wastes of Siberia, in the ruins of Koschei’s castle, you have carved out of a piece of your heart with a knife made from the remnants of the warrior-queen Marya Morevna’s sword. It hangs in a locket around your neck and so long as it does not break, you cannot die.

You are arrogant, in your new-found strength. You admit this. 

You slit her throat with the same knife you used on your heart, and Maman breaks every bone in your body. 

_My dear little rook,_ she purrs, fingers curled in your ribcage, _I thought you’d learned your lesson._

You have, you have. But not the one she intended.

\--

After this she keeps you by her side for a few centuries, and little Mircalla, the kitten, is added to what may be called a family, if one is willing to be loose with the term. 

She does grow on you. No getting around that. So wide-eyed, so _open-hearted_. It seems an age and age ago that you were like that.  


(Do you miss it? Perhaps. But sentiment is weakness.)  


Still, sentiment creeps in like fog, like mold, and your Mircalla--she’s as close to a sister as you will ever have, and you...  


Let us say you _care_ for her. That’s a messy word, but not so messy as _love_. You do not love. Love is for children. Love is for fools. You are neither; there is no room for softness in diamond.  


(And yet...)

\--

Mircalla displeases Maman, as everyone must at some point. For a girl. Some mortal slip of a thing--pretty enough, you suppose, this _Elle_ with her doe eyes and red-brown ringlets, but no one worth going up against Maman for. You’ve no idea why Mircalla doesn’t forget her and move on to the next one. She’s always gotten tired of them before. But she risks everything, everything for this latest infatuation, and fails. 

For this she goes in the ground. 

Maman does not take interference with the sacrifice lightly. For the god behind the Light, she would do anything--not quite love, not quite obsession, all wrapped up in her endless hunger for more. No one must put this connection in danger.  


So she locks Mircalla away under the earth, and as you watch the coffin go down and hear her howling, you think: _you little fool._

And you add one more thing to the long list of Maman’s sins--the ugly slate that only the tide of her death’s blood will wipe clean. It’s not that you object to her cruelty. Nor that you think you’re better by virtue of anything other than not having enough time to catch up.  


It’s that this happened to the sister you _liked._. 

_Someday, someday,_ you think, the word pounding steady in your head like the heartbeat you no longer have. 

Someday you will have the upper hand.

\--

When the bombs crack the earth open and Mircalla crawls out, you welcome her home, and you take her far away from there. To help her forget that silly girl and heal from those decades in the dark. 

Saigon is a lovely city. So much fun to be had. She’ll be over it all soon, won’t she? 

\--

Morocco is good to you. Good hunting, good weather; a beautiful coastline. People who ask no questions when you want a body taken away. The very best shopping. 

As fiefdoms go, there is no better. And then one day, just as you’re opening the throat of a young man with the most exquisite eyes, something _snaps_ in you--something deep and primal, at the base of your spine--

  
she’s dead  
she’s dead  
she’s dead  


\--and it _wasn’t you who killed her_. 

(And what of Mircalla?) 

But there is no time for raging or jealousy or, most foolish of all, worry. You did make a promise, and--alas--you are a woman of your word, even when it comes to a viper like your mother. Such little courtesies make the world go round. 

So you will fulfill it--you will find your little sister and you will do as your mother asked and you will rip everything you can from the corpse of her little sacrifice factory. And then you’ll come back to Morocco and do whatever you please for the rest of eternity.  


You can think of nothing lovelier.


End file.
